Talk:Lists of characters in A Song of Ice and Fire

This page is deprecated and redirects into List of A Song of Ice and Fire characters, which it currently redirects to. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Techhead7890 (talk • contribs) 09:06, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Character work for Song
There's quite a lot of work done on individual characters for Song. That's great, but maybe we should think about how this material should be organised. The Song-related pages seem to explode in number, but there is very little encyclopaedic material. Most of it are just one-paragraph stubs with -- and that is important -- little potential of ever becoming an encyclopaedic article.

Look instead at Light Characters in the Wheel of Time series. That's a good, encyclopaedic article (and reflects well on the WoT fandom). I would suggest to imitate that for Westerosi characters. A good start would be to merge all of your contributions into a single page (and change the other pages to re-directions).

That's not to say that there is no place for one-page articles about fictional characters. Gandalf is nice, and deserves a page. But Estë is not so nice, and looks like Fancruft. It's not clear that it needed a separate page, nor that a template needed to be constructed to aid the reader in navigating the less-than-overwhelming mass of material.

But generally I would prefer long, in-depth articles. When one of those overflows, then by all means let us refactor into smaller pages.

This is not a hard and fast rule. I can see the potential for a House Targaryen. That could become a great page, with heraldy and history and genealogy and customs and religion and individual paragraphs on notable Targs and whatnot.

(Actually, I am getting all exited about that idea. Let's focus on House Targaryen for a while and see what we can do with it.) Thore 09:45, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I've had a couple different thoughts on this: Nateji77 12:11, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * the major houses could each have their own page, with members and vassal houses described therein. khal drogo's house would be dothraki, anyone from the Free Cities as well as the individual free cities would redirect to Free Cities (A Song of Ice and Fire) etc.
 * POV characters could have their own pages, which would make House Stark and House Lannister sparser than others, but we could list members as sections and arya or bran's section could seimply say "see main article bran stark."
 * we could list all characters in a page "minor chracters in a song of ice and fire" and when the content reaches a certain "critical size" or amount of encyclopedic content move them to their own article.
 * the books still need their own pages; im also curious about the plot summaries which look like press release, back-of-the-book blurbs and probably might not qualify as public domain.

I don't agree that all these things deserve separate pages. This is an encyclopedia, not a list of lists. It is also not a place to put plot summaries. (There are lots of websites for that.) A rough plot summary for Game of Thrones is ok. Look at Nineteen Eighty-four for how an encyclopedic page for a book should look.
 * Whenever we actually produce enough content to fill a page above 32k, we can discuss splitting it into subpages, but otherwise no. How can there ever be an encyclopedic article about Bran Stark? I don't get it.
 * As I said, Gandalf deserves a page. The current one is still too small, but there is potential. What are Gandalf's literary influences (Merlin in the Arthurian legends)? What literary archetype is he an examle of?How is he portrayed by different artists and movie makers? What characters in fantasy are heavily inspired by Gandalf? That's encylopedic stuff, and Gandalf is a sufficiently important figure in fantasy to deserve that kind of attention. Bran isn't. There is no potential for an encyclopdic article about him.
 * You are overly concerned with infrastructure instead of content. I would rather that we focus our efforts on producing a couple of really good pages. No lists that point to nothing, and no plot summaries. For example, we need a good Westeros page, like the Middle-earth page. Climate, people, geography, history, etc. That's content -- hard work. We don't need a proliferation of stubs and substubs and a large list that points to them. That's infrastructure, and without content it just smacks of fancruft. Like having a page for every single Britney Spears song ever done.
 * When at some time the content becomes unmanageably large, then we can discuss subpages and templates and so on. But it's much easier to refactor content after you have content, instead of producing an infrastructure beforehand that forces others contributors to follow a largely arbitrary structure. Electronic media make it easy to change infrastructure to follow content. It shouldn't be the other way around.
 * On the other hand, I really like your House Targaryen idea. That's a great idea for a large, in-depth page. I just added "Traits and customs". It would be lovely if we could focus our efforts on making that page really good. (That includes merging Dany's page into it, and adding paragraphs about other notable Targaryens.) Thore 10:43, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I agree with you about the fancruft, but not about lists that point to nothing; we can un-wiki the lists or reduce their size, cut away anything that doesnt seem essential but there'll still be lists (a list of major vassal houses to house stark would be relevant to a house stark page, no? or a key item for illegitimate children's surnames by region?). aside from that, my previous post was just a brainstorm.

there were a lot of red links and substubs when i started on these pages (i wrote Arya Stark to avoid having it look like Cersei Lannister), and mostly i was just trying to get rid of that; i would've started merging pages last night, but there's probly some other people who'll wanna chime in. house targaryen wasn't my idea...

is 32k the limit? high, lower? looking at the WoT page--do you want that much plot summary on major characters? will read over the middle earth and fancruft talk pages this week.

is there a site for public domain, wiki'd cliff notes out there for things like 1984?

and calm down, man. no need for italics.

Nateji77 17:18, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Guideline for SoIaF characters
There is lots and lots of wonderful material about SoIaF added to the Wikipedia lately, and that is almost exclusively good news. However (at the danger of biting some newcomers and smothering enthusiasm) I would like us to agree on a few guidlines. This is mostly prompted by two recent discussions on Votes for Deletion about Song-related material, which I would like to avoid in the future. I am trying to fight for the Aerys Targaryen article, and think I have improved it somewhat, but to avoid such problems in the future I would prefer some consensus about issues of style and granularity.

As the result of the first of the "Votes for Deletions" discussions, I was asked to think about merging the character-related material. I have done some thinking (and some moving and editing, without really getting anywhere), and would like to submit the following ideas for considerations:

Where to draw the line
This series, and its fandom, is obsessed with detail. In principle, this obsession is highly compatible with Wikipedia aims, and ought to produce comprehensible, well-written, and well-researched articles. On the other hand, the mindless inclusion of trivial details about fictional universes is dangerously close to fancruft, which (in my view) is not a good thing for Wikipedia (this is debatable, please follow the link). What's worse, it makes the article in question less useful for all but the most dedicated reader. (And finally, it's a sure way to get the article listed for Deletion, which just makes it a lot of work and eventually results in a rewrite after all.)

Intended audience
For Song material on Wikipedia, I think the intended audience should be casual readers who want to solidify their understanding of the background, possibly after of during their first reading, or people who haven't actually read the books (but, say, played the game, or read about -- I never read Wheel of Time, but the WoT-related articles on Wikipedia are very useful introductions). This means that the articles should be generally accessible to a non-expert audience. Good examples of such pages from other fantasy universes are Middle-earth, Gandalf, Narnia, or even Weapons of Star Wars (just to show that I am not opposed to fictional trivia.)

Book summaries
As a consequence, I don't think the articles should contain book summaries. I can't really see who is interested in reading about the things that happen in the books (but see below). That's what the books are for, not Wikipedia. (However, Wikipedia ought to include a book summary on the page for the relevant book, with a spoiler warning. That's just like any encyclopedia.)

On the other hand, it would be very useful to have summaries of events that happen prior to the books, especially those that are revealed only bit by bit and in random order. For example, the summary of the War of the Usurper on Aerys Targaryen is pure gold (needs clean-up, but that's beside the point). Such things are extremely good because the are almost impossible to understand by just reading the books, and an encyclopedia article is perfect for it.

To make this quite clear: An account of the War of the Usurper (which is really hard to assemble by just reading the books, even after re-reads) is very interesting, and Wikipedia is just the right place for it. An account of what happens to Arya in the three books is not so good, because it's just a summary of the Arya chapters.

The gist of these meandering is that I would very much like us to agree on a policy that frowns upon "summaries of what actually happens in the main plotline". The reasons are (1) it's baaaad fancruft, and (2) it's unclear which audience benefits form this information. I may be wrong about this, so please, please comment.


 * [Since these books come out every few years, a summary (or at the very least a plot outline, or links to websites who have them) would be a useful refresher for those who want to start the latest book without having to re-read or skim the previous books. Here is a link to chapter summaries written by Vincent Briscuso for "A Game of Thrones" (contains spoilers) http://members.aol.com/vbkorik27/summary/AGOT.htm] (Unsigned interjection by anon IP 24.18.150.239.)

List of stuff
Along the same lines, I am not too fond of the "List of xxx" articles that appear (about Song and elsewhere on Wikipedia). I cannot see who wants a List of Places of Westeros. On the other hand, I can see lots of people who would like to see a good, long article about the geography of Westeros, which might then include such a list.

Arbor 13:12, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Merging content from Rickard Stark
I am merging material from Rickard Stark as per its VfD. Regular contributors can maintain this list as they see fit, but I suggest that if other articles get merged to this list, you should place the content in here and bold the character name instead of making it a link to the article. --Deathphoenix 18:02, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Scratch that. The articles are a redirect to House Stark, which is probably sufficient for the purposes of this list. --Deathphoenix 18:10, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Organization of Minor Characters.
I've cleaned up repeated names on the list; if there are four Wills in the book simply listing "Will" four times does no good to anybody.

Anyway I was thinking no one is going to come and look at this list to just browse names looking for names of intrest as this is a article involving fiction and anybody here already know what's up, they're just looking for clarification on something. The only way I can think to organize all these names for search and ease of use is by leaving this list in place and then linking onto broader pages ie the House Stark page with their members listerd here.

IMHO opinion what we need for minor characters:


 * Kingsguard Page
 * Night's Watch
 * Bannermen of Each Major House Page (a good catchall for nobility)
 * Freeriders, Sellswords, Hedge Knights and Bandits of aSoIaF Page
 * A Citadel Page
 * A Religions of aSoIaF Page
 * Free Cities Page
 * etc

Any other ideas would be cool but I'm going to start in on this. My hope is that we can far exceed the scope and design of the WoT pages. aSoIaF deserves and at times demands something more. NeoFreak 20:08, 29 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't think that's such a good idea.  The notability guidelines at WP:FICT say that minor characters belong in a list, either in the main article or (as here) in a separate article if the main article gets too long. I would suggest renaming this article to Minor characters in A Song of Ice and Fire and adding the brief character descriptions WP:FICT suggests.  If, after that is done, the article is too long (I think it probably will be), we can consider breaking into A-L and M-Z or something along those lines.  Having a couple dozen short lists of characters just requires the reader to move around a lot to find the information she wants, and invites an AFD.  And, if they are minor characters, how much detail on them does an encyclopedia need?  Scope and design are all very well, but perspective and approachability are also useful.  I don't see how it's desirable to catalog every detail of this or that aspect of the universe; that's what fansites (or a Wikia) are for. Brendan Moody 21:43, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Oppose Minor characters.... I think this page works best if all of them are here. It doesn't make a difference in length if there are 1000 or 975, and the decision whether Areo Hotah is minor or not is too difficult. Even if we agreed, no reader would be able to follow our reasoning. Apart from that: yes, one-line descriptions for each character on this list (so we know which Pate is meant), and a link to another page (if a longer description exists) is just what this page should evolve into. Ideally, using the search function, a reader should be able to use this page for navigation, instead of having to find an individual character by guessing "Is Jon Snow listed under House Stark or Tall buildings in A Song of Ice and Fire or Bastards of Westeros or List of characters who know nothing?" No matter where he ended up, Jon should have a one-line entry here, with a link to the most comprehensive entry. (Which will be House Targaryen, of course ;) ). Arbor 07:10, 30 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree. The best use for this page is an alphabetical listing of all characters which can link out to more relavent pages for the characters and small, simple description for those characters that are too minor too warrant being included in another page. This way the page can be used as a start point for researching people. I've started to dothis with the Kinsguard page I made and the overhaul of the Night's Watch page as well. NeoFreak 07:48, 30 May 2006 (UTC)


 * You're right about Minor characters being a bad idea; I managed to suggest it without actually realizing that it would mean removing the major characters.  Agreed on everything else (well, not the R+L=J nonsense :p). Brendan Moody 08:26, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Well I just threw up the begining of the Kingsguard page, check it out to get a better idea of what I have in mind, just please keep in mind it's a rough start not a finish product. The problem with having a huge list of characters is there is no substance. When people are refrencing characters from the books they are looking for how they tie into the story in a way the appendix can't provide. I think that each of the articles I have listed have enough to stand on their own merit and adding a listing of relevent characters to each article wouldn't be a big deal. A person can look up a name on this list than just follow the internal link to see where they fit into the story. NeoFreak 22:45, 29 May 2006 (UTC)


 * The Kingsguard page has a lot of typos and some format problems but looks good in terms of content. I don't object to articles like that, with history/background/concept sections in addition to character information.  What I don't like is the idea of articles that are just collections of brief character descriptions, because they conflict needlessly with well-established guidelines on minor character pages. Brendan Moody 22:53, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I completely agree with you. I'm sorry about the typos I wanted to get the page up to start doing some links from this page and give people intrested in this a better idea of where I want to go with it. I'll polish it up and add alot more content in the future. I have no intrest in just starting list articles that link off here, I want to have stand alone articles that people can use to find and get background on characters off here as well. Obviously a the dozens of characters that get a few sentences in the books is not going to get listed. NeoFreak 23:03, 29 May 2006 (UTC)


 * No problem about the typos; I've made more than my share. I corrected as many as I could find in Kingsguard, and added some more internal links. Brendan Moody 23:09, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Duplicate Articles ?
What is the difference between this article and the following one:


 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characters_in_A_Song_of_Ice_and_Fire

I am putting this question in both articles' talk pages. 66.97.213.202 (talk) 23:09, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Turning this page into a dab
I tried to boldly convert this into a dab, but it was reverted. Can we discuss whether this article should stay? I think it has no added value over the two other lists (Major houses in A Song of Ice and Fire & Characters in A Song of Ice and Fire). Together those two lists have over 80 characters, which should be plenty even for a series as large as ASOIAF. This list is full of characters who play absolutely no role in the books and who nobody remembers (do you know who Lady Vaith is? Bandy? or Torrek?). It is outside the scope of wikipedia to host a list of every named character (wp:NOTDIR). We have ASOIAF specific encyclopedias such as the Tower of the hand for that kind of stuff and even there they barely receive mention. Yoenit (talk) 14:28, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
 * So, it has been over a month and no reply at all. Guess it is time to be bold one more time and if I get reverted again nominate the page for deletion. Yoenit (talk) 20:45, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't see the problem with the comprehensive list. Yes, it was massive, but it was also comprehensive. Every main character or notable character had a link you could follow for more detailed information. Why not leave it at that? I'm failing to see why the large list has to be deleted.Dpetley (talk) 03:54, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
 * wp:NOTDIR. Yoenit (talk) 11:08, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Please can I have the list back? it's a useful, relatively spoiler free, reference guide for those of us who have just started reading the books. Iaintipping (talk) 14:15, 18 June 2011 (UTC)